Analysis highlights the effect of vaping over past decade

Analysis from the Archive of Market and Social Research has underlined the profound effect vaping is having on cutting smoking rates.

Since the late 1960s smoking rates have declined from 49% to 15% today. The rate of decline has increased over the past decade in parallel with the arrival and growth of e-cigarettes.

In 2013, 3.7% of smokers reported using e-cigarettes but in six years this had more than doubled, reaching 8.2% or 4.4m adults. The analysis used data from Kantar TGI GB.

The analysis also provided information on the differences in smoking rates between different economic groups. While Ds and Es have remained the heaviest smokers over the past 30 years, each group has seen a similar level of decline in rates of smoking. Ds and Es also tend to be the heaviest smokers more than 20 per day) emphasising the inequalities associated with smoking and explaining why charities such as ASH and Cancer Research UK have focused on tackling smoking among these groups in particular.

The full analysis is available to read here.